


Nothing in common

by Bye11



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 03:11:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bye11/pseuds/Bye11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement." (Herman Hesse). Post season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'd be very grateful for any suggestion you might have on how to improve my Cary or my Kalinda. Thanks!

Who was still so old-fashioned to send wedding invitations by mail? On golden paper to boot?

Arabesquely handwritten, velvety to the touch wedding invitations. There had to be some kind of rule that assumed a negative RSVP when the whole presentation was so ridiculously pompous.

Instead, he RSVPed Yes and put the note in the pile for the secretary to send out. When you were the head of a newborn firm and an Innocence-project buddy was marrying the daughter of a judge, you did not say no.

Each event was an opportunity to swap business-cards, to court clients. A wedding was the perfect venue. Open bar, cynical people sneering at the happy couple and waiting to be hand-held to a new law-firm.

Alicia's life seemed to be entrenched in night-parties at the Opera, at the opening of a foundation, at the awards ceremony for something or other. As the First Couple of Illinois, she and her husband were always honored guests. Eli had come to their firm but in exchange he had required her presence to a number of appearances.

She despised it all, the parties, the mandatory networking, the boredom, the people, he could clearly see it, but she did it anyway. He had to pull his weight and go to a self-important, ostentatious wedding.

The last time a wedding-invitation had come to his work place, someone had intercepted it. She had come to his office waving it in her hand and he had smirked and lowered his eyes, prepared for a slaughter.

"Mr and Mrs Ryland and Mr and Mrs Sutton require the honor of your presence to the wedding... here take it, I got bored already."

"The Suttons and the Rylands, generous people that they are, are asking me if I have a plus one."

He didn't truly know what had been that day that had led him to ask her the question. But he had.

"Soooo, do I have one?"

"How would I know? Unless you're seriously asking me to go to a wedding with you. In which case the answer is "Not a chance in hell" but I'd imagine you know that one."

"Why not? You'd get to be seen on the arm of the most intriguing man in the room. Plus people get drunk and are depressed at weddings. Perfect time to wheedle secrets."

"People tell me secrets even when they're not drunk or in a taffeta dress. That's how good I am."

She had delivered her last line with that trademark demeanor of hers that combined her slightly raised eyebrow with her expression that was the love-child of a smile and a smirk. Then she had left his office and they had never talked about it again.

This time he could not even get close to obtaining a rejection from her.

Lately all he had been receiving were menacing glares and malicious smirks anytime she found something that would inevitably destroy his or Alicia's case and help "Gardner & Associates" to a new win. Robyn was a spectacular investigator but Kalinda was animated by the fire of revenge and there was no stopping her. Or Will for that matter. They hadn't spared any resource to sink what used to be their co-workers.

What kind of chit-chat could he have at the wedding?

No, I'm not with anyone... Being name-partner is hard work... Yes, we left Lockhart/Gardner, it was time for a change...No, don't worry I'm not forgetting to have fun...

Fun, what a foreign world.

Friends were sending him invitations to big social gatherings but that was about it.

He had tried hanging out with some of them but the distance his job had put between him and his personal life had taken its toll. Entertainment by conversation was scarce and instead of putting up with the farce for much longer, he had just stopped. Some of them were envious to the point of animosity of his having a partnership with the wife of the Governor, some couldn't understand the risks he had taken. Some others... who knew?

Family was out of the question.

What was left if he desired something more than work?

Drugs? He had been staying far away from those ever since Alicia has covered his being high with Will and Diane. Days off were a commodity name-partners didn't trade in.

Sex? He could go out of his office, take the elevator down and in the block he would find two or three bars with plenty of potential for a one-night stand. He had done it. He might do it again. Yet, somehow it felt like the kind of behavior he had outgrown.

Or, maybe, he was afraid of going that route because he knew what he could expect. He could expect to become Will Gardner. In his forties, still boyishly charming, never married, on the list of most-eligible bachelors, with a bevy of beauties around him.

That was the image he projected to the world but he had worked around him long enough not to be fooled. All of those were merely smoke sculptures that hid his love for one woman. That one woman that he had helped, cuddled, defended and that had stolen clients from him when he wasn't looking.

He hadn't neither questioned nor judged Alicia's decision. Merely reveled in it. And going behind Will's back hadn't fazed him that much. Not compared to how terrible he had felt in betraying Diane.

However, he pitied his ex-boss. The white-to-black change in his countenance and in his dealings with Alicia spoke of a profound pain.

At times, he caught himself wishing that his actions had left in Kalinda a fraction of the trace Alicia's actions had clearly left in Will. It was a petty thought that he generally brushed away. He didn't want her to suffer per se, he just needed some kind of signal that he mattered to her more than the myriad of men and women she used and played for information.

Because the last piece of the private-life puzzle was love. And despite all his efforts, despite having repeated to himself over and over again that it was a dangerous idea and that he should forget her very existence, Kalinda had taken residence in a very special position in his life.

She had become the woman he was perennially on the verge of falling in love with.

One little push from her would suffice to make him her fool.

He had come close.

She had protected him from a certain layoff and gave him the necessary space to finalize his project.

She had let him compliment her.

They had slept together and he had completely understood why all those conquests of her were still at his beck and call even after years.

They had shared secret smirks across the crowded bullpen.

Then it had all gone terribly wrong.

He hadn't known how to proceed, what step to take. Kalinda was no normal woman. He had threaded softly, trying not to push too hard and scare her into a precocious retreat but he had fumbled with the right decisions. She had told him long before that she was unknowable to him. 3 years later and he still hadn't even scratched the surface of who Kalinda Sharma was.

The timing had been off. He had found some sort of equilibrium with her but then he had focused on his firm. He owed it to himself and to his partners in crime. He couldn't possibly let it all go. He had tried to bring her with him, to give them a new lease, a new chance at work and something else and then...

He refused to take all the blame. She had been impervious to any plea, unreasonable in her demands for money. Didn't she know that he valued her expertise, her intelligence, her instincts, her in general more than anybody else in the world?. He had been losing the reins of his enterprise before the start line. He had seen in Robyn the only way to stop the chaos and re-assess his power over his future. He had taken it.

Kalinda had seen it as a personal back-stabbing.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe she wasn't.

He had learned that there were two sets of rules in their world: the ones that Kalinda obeyed, which amounted more or less to the motto "be faithful to yourself" and the ones for everybody else. She could play people, tweak them, invade their offices, their privacy. She could leverage her friendships and her bosses and get away with it all, a smile and her image unblemished. She had even partly gotten back in Alicia's good graces after having slept with her husband. The impossible made possible.

She had this unique way of asking for help. The vulnerability that came with admitting the need for an external hand did not touch Kalinda. It didn't even exist in her. She moved from person to person like Chicago Royalty. She went through the motions of making a request but she didn't truly ask. She was owed. She didn't have helpers or friends. She had servants that satisfied her whim for knowledge. Helping her felt like a pleasurable duty. A duty nonetheless.

He was tired of her self-entitlement.

This last year, he had been put through a grinder. He had been beaten, he had been humiliated and then used by his father, he had been offered a equity partnership that had then disappeared and then he had thrown all of his energy into a new endeavor, trying so hard to keep all the pieces together. She had witnessed at least some of it.

Hadn't he earned just a little bit of respect for how he had handled things? Didn't she care for him just a little bit? He did not expect sympathy from a tough problem-solver like her. He didn't even want it. But respect? Acceptance? Friendship?

Hadn't she been the one to tell him that she couldn't give him what he wanted because they worked together? Couldn't she see that at least one of the obstacles had been taken away?

He was not going to be Will Gardner. He needed to start or end this thing with Kalinda once and for all.

He had allowed her to be angry. He had allowed her to stew in her revengeful mood. He had accepted her not wanting to hear his side of the story. He had taken the looks, the whispers, the scowls.

He wouldn't anymore.

He was due some slack-cutting from her. Time to cash it in.


	2. Chapter 2

"Look who's there!"

"Hello Holly."

"Hello Linds."

"I thought I already told you to stop using that poor excuse of a nickname."

"You did. You also might have threatened me but I know you, Linds. Your bark is always worse than your bite..."

"I should start showing my bite more then."

"You definitely should. I missed it."

Holly winked and she returned it with a smirk. Presences from back in her life were never welcomed in her life but Holly might be the exception. Cocky, flirty and without strings. Fun, just like she used to be after she fled from Canada.

She truly hated the nickname though. It had to go.

"I never will if you don't stop calling me as a blonde, naive child"

She merely laughed.

"So, what do you need today Linds?"

She turned on her heels and made for the door. Some respect needed to be upheld.

"Cut the theatrics, Linds. I'm the ASA on the case, who else are you going to pester for help?"

"I don't pester. Mosquitoes pester. Men that want to get laid pester. I don't belong in either category. Bye Holly!"

"Since when are you so touchy?"

She hoped the expression on her face could properly translate the disgust she felt at that word. She started moving away... 3,2,1

"Kalinda, wait! Come on, I'm not your enemy."

"Actually, you are."

"Until I give you the info you need on the case, right? Then I'm back to being your friend..."

"You're back to not being on my bad side, which should be more than enough."

"No, no, Kalinda, that's not how it works anymore. I sit at the grown-up table now."

"Which means..."

"I negotiate right back. I give you the info you need, you spend tomorrow night reminding what are the perks of not being on your bad side."

"Now, that sounds a lot like prostitution. In this office, it is frowned upon."

"It may sound like prostitution. It is me getting advantage of my "informational privileges". That expression kind of stuck with me since a certain someone invented it."

She had her there. Also, a night with Holly might just be what she needed to get rid of unwanted thoughts.

"Fine, you better be prepared to show me that you have memorized other teachings of mine."

Holly went to retrieve the file she needed and moved her legs just a bit more sinuously than normal, for her benefit no doubt.

"You'll find me more than prepared and eager to teach."

"To teach? I don't remember you being so delusional."

"I don't remember you being so settled down. Staying too long in a place... techniques get stale and...unimaginative."

Holly raised one eyebrow and shrugged as if she were disclosing some irrefutable reality. Good, she had shed some of that false innocence that had bothered her back at the time of their first meeting. She pried the file from her hands and as always prepared to have the last word.

"I don't blame you. Some people do need external stimuli to be imaginative. I, on the other hand, don't need anything. I invented imaginative."

She could hear Holly's laughter behind her.

"Tomorrow night at 8, outside the courthouse."

There. Done. Easy. Information and carefree sex in one neat package. She still had all her moves. She still knew how to play people without attachment getting in the way. Without hurting. Without getting hurt.

They were only the exceptions. The tag-team of the woman she had regretted hurting and the man that had hurt her.

And he had. Because he had to have known that the game she was playing was not just about money and power. It was about trust. And they had both lost.

It was apparently simple for people to assume that her motives were futile and that her life was nothing more than a silly series of battles for information. And it couldn't be all accounted to her image clouded in mystery. Cary had made it all about being more valued, appreciated. He had just assumed her services were for sale. Not a moment to consider her allegiance to Alicia or to Will & Diane.

And yes, of course she had played Will for a raise and an advancement in her role. What self-respecting pragmatic, self-reliant woman wouldn't? But that didn't mean that she had been utterly conflicted.

On the one hand there was a firm, a man, that had believed in her since the beginning and had given her a place to start again after the troubling time at the SA's office. There was the chance of tentatively repairing her one female friendship-and-nothing-more she had valued. There was maintaining a friend like Will that listened and never asked more than was she felt comfortable revealing.

On the other hand there had been the possibility of becoming finally rich and completely independent, of being consulted in important decisions, of never having to face any internal competition, just heading other investigators if necessary. On the other hand there was him.

Defining what Cary was merely a waste of her time. Definitions were juvenile and below her. But he had indeed amounted to much more than she had believed at the beginning.

He had started as the obnoxious new associate that believed a law degree gave him God-like powers over any other non-lawyer populating the firm. He was young and boyishly handsome which had probably gotten him laid more than the average law-student which had made him unjustifiably popular and insufferably cocky.

But then having gotten to work beside him had allowed her to discover that he wasn't much different from the boss she didn't dislike. He seemed worse than he actually was. He cared for his clients more than he showed, he was competitive but he could see the value in his opponents. Not all of his jokes landed flat and his company was astonishingly sufferable.

She had felt herself end on a slippery slope with Cary. Being a little more revealing, trusting him with more, asking help in delicate situations. It had surprised her, at the beginning. Cary didn't share much with Nick, with Lana or with some of the others men and women she had been drawn to in her past. He wouldn't ever be violent, he wouldn't necessarily trick her at every moment, he wouldn't be interested in her merely for sex. He was the good-boyfriend material that her mother had tried to get her to like, with no avail. That label had always constituted an insult for her but with Cary, maybe, it wasn't.

The good boyfriend had also much more in common with her that she had ever imagined. He was on his own, for one. No noisy family to cuddle him at Christmas and Thanksgiving, sending him encouragement when he felt down. No friends that were more than contacts he hang out with for appearances' sake. Not a Will willing to go to war for him should he ever need it. Yet, alone, he thrived. He was smart in his maneuvers and cunning when the situation required it. He could wear a double mask. She could not help but admire a fellow survivor that had managed despite it all to remain decent.

And that was why it had infuriated her so much, his going behind her back. Because he was supposed to be the decent guy. Decent guys did not exist to try and leverage her with unresolved feelings and grand promises just to go behind her back. Decent guys did not try to trap her into a job using friendship and the potential of more. Decent guys did not go to FUCKING Robyn!

To be honest, she had predicted him failing in a short time without her and with only those brainless other fourth-years. He would have fallen and learned his lesson. She hadn't counted on Alicia joining him.

She had gathered the news from one of the fleeing clients while on a mission for Will & Diane. At the beginning she had thought of an exaggerating sales-pitch for the new firm but then she had reflected that Cary would never have been so carelessly brazen. It had to be the truth. One more nail, probably the final one, in the coffin of their mending relationship.

Cary wouldn't crush and burn. He would be co-head of a booming firm because Alicia and Alicia's name would attract money and clients. Her first thought was for the missed occasion. As a trio they would have been sensational. Practically unbeatable. And unseen she allowed herself a sort of smile for them and their new adventure that would never be.

Then she returned to reality. Reality gave her the chance to push Cary down from the high of his new position and show off her superior ability. Reality meant she had to tell Diane.

Reality meant someone had to tell Will.

That had been a scene she would never forget. A scene she recalled to mind whenever Cary's smile or his word made her flirt with forgiveness. Not that it had been Cary's fault per se but it reinforced in her the firm belief that, by way of his back-plotting, she had ended up on the right team.

They had decided to go break the news as an united front. When she had revealed what she knew to Diane, she had double-checked Alicia's involvement and the woman had followed her same reaction. At first, she had focused on her interests, on what it meant for her but then, all of a sudden, she had downed the drink she was holding with a simple sentence they both knew to be the truth: "He'll be devastated."

Will was in his office, hard at work on his death-penalty case. He raised his eyes and at seeing the two of them together, immediately understood that it was about the firm.

"Have you found out?"

The question was immediate and addressed to her.

"Yes. Diane already knows."

"Diane here means bad news. It's Cary, isn't it? The gall of him! Working with me every day of this Hail Mary case and at the same time plotting..."

"Will", they had both interrupted.

She turned to Diane for guidance. She nodded and with her resolute tone said what they both weren't willing to voice.

"Alicia too."

He was startled but utterly incredulous. He swatted the harsh truth they had handed him as a fastidious insect.

"Nah, that's all false advertising. I was with her an hour ago. She was fine. She would have told me if something was amiss."

She and Diane were both tough women. They didn't hug, they didn't unnecessarily cry, they didn't make coo sounds. But from the look she saw in Diane's face at that moment they shared, for a brief second, an impulse to break all of their patterns.

"We're sure."

She saw the change in his face, the darkening of the expression once the realization set in. She saw his jaw setting, his fists closing to contain the rage, the mist appearing in his eyes.

Then it was all over. He returned to his briefs.

"It's too late to do anything about it now. Ms. Conley shouldn't suffer for our civil wars. Do you think you could get a complete list of the clients by tomorrow?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good, Diane could you set up an equity partner meeting for tomorrow morning? We need our full ranks for an emergency-strategy."

"Sure, do you want to oust her like that?"

"She probably won't come and if she does, well, she deserves all that she gets and more."

They both nodded and moved away.

"Thanks, to the both of you."

Nodding again, they left him to his appeal. An appeal he won two days later, despite everything. She was standing with Diane at the end of the room, as a telltale sign to whoever wanted to listen that Will Gardner wasn't alone and that they were bent but never broken.

The experience had given her a renewed closeness to Will. They had both sworn off emotional complications and they found themselves more than once starting the night at a bar on the prowl and ending it in unknown locations. His toast the first night had been her new philosophy.

"Damn healthy and stable!"

She would have to ditch him for Holly the day after. He would probably be too busy with the case anyway. And she would be demonstrating just how not stale her capacities were. She hadn't even realized the thought had put a smirk on her face when a voice intruded in her solitude, right on her doorstep.

"Do I want to know what you're smirking about?"


End file.
